Christmas in Apple Ridge (46 page)

Beth pulled a business card from her hidden apron pocket. “If you ever have a surplus and are looking for a place to sell them, come see me.”

“Denki.” Sadie took the card and touched the bed. “Levi, I need to go.”

“Not without leaving your address and phone number.”

Beth and Mattie looked at each other, a definite glimmer of interest passing between them.

Mattie fetched pen and paper from an end table and passed it to Sadie.

What could it hurt for him to have her address and phone number?

L
evi stood in the round pen. He held a thirty-foot line in one hand and a lightweight longe whip in the other. Despite the neck brace he wore, he turned in circles with the horse on the other end of the line, training the animal to understand and follow his commands.
“Geh.”

The horse picked up its pace.

Even though Blaze hadn’t been training long, the colt moved more fluidly and even paced than Levi could. Still, it was far easier for Levi to get around now that the cast on his leg had been removed a mere two days ago. He moved like an old man in winter while he sweated under the grueling August sun.

Levi needed to make up for lost training time.
“Langsam.”
Blaze didn’t slow a tad. “Langsam,” Levi repeated in the same even tone. The horse raised its head and altered its pace a little. “Gut … Langsam.”

“Uncle Levi.” Tobias sat on the split-rail fence and pointed at the whip. “You gotta at least let him see that out of the corner of his eye.”

“Who’s doing the training? Me or you?”

Tobias clutched a hand to the top of his head. “But you’re
not
listening to me.”

“You’re being impatient again.” When Levi had been on crutches, he’d had to enlist Tobias’s help to tend and train the horses. The boy had
a knack for handling the stout and sometimes difficult creatures, but he lacked patience with the tedious process.

“So who got throwed by a horse? Me or you?”

“I have a better question, peanut. Who’s going to be sent inside if he doesn’t stop telling me what to do?” Levi knew that threat would carry some weight. Tobias liked being in his or Andy’s shadow at all times. Since Andy was in the barn tending to the other horses, if Tobias had to go inside, he’d be by himself.

Tobias made monkey gestures in the air, touching the top of his head and flailing his arms, huffing and making mocking gestures—but in all his silliness, he didn’t say anything. For almost a minute. “Not everybody thinks you need to go as slow as you do with training horses, Uncle Levi.”

“What’s their motivation for feeling that way? Because it’s what’s best for the horse and the buyer or because it’s what’s easiest and most profitable for the trainer?”

Tobias frowned but seemed to mull over the question.

Amigo had been five years old when Daniel bought him last spring from an auction. Levi didn’t know why the horse reacted so violently to the fireworks last month, but he’d learned some valuable lessons, ones that caused him and Andy to start training their horses differently. One brother fed the animal and soothed him while the other made an awful racket just outside the barn—beating a horseshoe against a ten-gallon tub, yelling and clapping, or sounding an old car horn. The technique seemed to be desensitizing the animals to loud noises, but it was too early to tell if that would translate to a calmer horse on a road.

“Look.” Tobias pointed at the mailman pulling onto the gravel driveway. He hopped down. “Whatcha want to guess he’s got another package from your girlfriend?”

Levi continued working with Blaze, but he hoped the man did have
another package from Sadie. She needed money for her mission trip, and he wanted to do all he could to help her. He’d put some of the life-sized cloth dolls she sewed in his handcrafted cradles and highchairs. When the two items were combined, they sold like hotcakes at Hertzlers’.

He also enjoyed the short letters that accompanied her packages. When he first came up with the idea of her making dolls to go with some of his toy furniture, he called her. But she wasn’t keen on the idea of partnering with him. It’d taken a few phone calls before he could sufficiently assure her that he was only interested in being a friend and repaying his debt to her.

Dealing with her was like working with a spooked horse. At first he thought she’d been in a relationship that had gone bad. But after coming to know her a little better, he understood that her heart belonged to the people in a remote Peruvian village, and she was determined to stay the course.

Tobias took the package from the man and held it up. “Ya, it’s from her.”

“Gut.” He’d never known anyone like Sadie.

Just as the mailman pulled out of the driveway, he saw another vehicle coming in. Daniel rolled down the passenger window and waved.

Levi returned the wave. “Tobias, go put that on my bed before anything happens to it.” The dolls’ faces, arms, and legs were made of white cotton, and if they were smudged, they didn’t sell as easily.

Tobias tore out running.

Levi didn’t expect Daniel this week. Then again, Daniel may not have known himself until the mood struck him to head this way.

The truck came to a halt, and Daniel got out. “A man without a cast on his leg.” Daniel shook Levi’s hand and patted his shoulder at the same time. “Still got that noose around your neck, I see. How you feeling?”

“Lighter now.” Levi ran two fingers around the top collar of the brace. “And ready to be free of this yoke around my neck.”

“Sure you are. You’re gettin’ there. It’s been a hot summer to have to wear that thing while working.”

The screen door flung open, and Tobias ran outside.

Daniel didn’t seem to notice the boy. He motioned to his driver, Tip. “I heard there are some good horses going on the block tonight at Toppers. I’d sure like it if you could join me.”

“Your eye for buying horses at auction is much better than mine.”

“Ya, but you’re better at knowing which one should go to which trainer.”

Andy emerged from the barn. “Daniel, I didn’t know you were here … or even coming.”

“I’m not staying. We’ll talk horse-trading another time. But I’m hoping to borrow Levi for a bit.”

Daniel called it horse-trading, but what he meant was buying the animals at auction, bringing them to Levi to train, selling them to people throughout the region, and settling up with the Fisher brothers what was owed. Nobody worried about a timetable for the payments. Daniel’s word was good enough, and he was more than fair when it came to paying people for their services, but he did things in his own way and time.

Tobias bounced up and down. “Can I go?”

“Not this time, champ.” Daniel pushed down on the top of Tobias’s straw hat. “We might not be home until the wee hours of the morning, and if we arrive that late, your uncle will need some sleep, and your Daed will need your help tending to the horses the next morning.” Daniel pulled a five-dollar bill from his billfold. “You’ll agree to work for me, ya?”

“Wow.” Tobias took the money, staring at it with wide eyes. “I’m available anytime.”

“Gut. I’m glad to hear it.”

It dawned on Levi that by going to Toppers, he’d be fifteen to twenty minutes from Sadie’s place in Stone Creek. “What time does the horse auction begin?”

“Around eight, most likely. Of course, as usual, you and Tip will stay at Toppers while I find some lonely girl to take to dinner.”

Daniel’s dating habits were questionable at best, but at least he seemed to be trying to find someone. Still, it seemed odd how quickly Daniel could connect with a woman only to lose interest within the same evening.

Daniel’s plans aside, it was around one now, and it’d take two hours to get there. If Sadie were home, that meant he could visit with her for a couple of hours before the horses were on the block. Daniel didn’t need him to help buy the horses, only to pair each animal with a trainer.

“Levi?”

He looked at Daniel. “Sure. Just let me jump in the shower. I’ll be ready in ten minutes.” He headed for the house.

“The horses don’t care what you smell like,” Daniel hollered.

“Ten minutes.” Levi hurried into the house, hoping he would see Sadie tonight.

T
he wooden floors of the old store creaked as Sadie carried a large sign to the window. She taped it to the glass: For Sale.

It seemed as if her hopes of having enough money to go back to Peru hung in the balance more than ever, teetering under the weight of yet another unexpected change in her world.

She turned, taking a long look around her, enjoying the sights and smells of the old-fashioned place. In her mind’s eye she could see Loyd and Edna the day she’d wandered in here. She’d said she was looking for work, but she needed so much more than that. She’d been broken and mortified by Daniel. Although she hadn’t told Loyd or Edna about her former fiancé, they seemed to understand what she needed and took her under their wing. At the same time, they taught her how to earn a living while her heart mended.

Now, as unexpectedly as a summer storm, Loyd had fallen ill, and Edna insisted on getting out from under the pressure of running the store.

“Sadie.” Blanche, her coworker and a roommate, held up a large cardboard box. “Do you need another one?”

Edna had told them to get all their crafts off the shelves and to return what they could to the manufacturers. After some advertising, they would put everything else into a one-day-only, going-out-of-business sale.

“Ya. Denki.” She took the box and moved to the candle aisle.

Edna insisted on rearranging her life so she didn’t have to focus on anything but Loyd. The elderly woman had been ready to be free of the store for a long time, but Loyd enjoyed the work too much to let it go. Edna hadn’t set foot inside Farmers’ Five-and-Dime since Loyd’s stroke two weeks ago, because she hadn’t left his side for a moment.

Sadie pulled jars of her homemade candles off the shelves. Seeing Edna and Loyd like this made her ache all over, confirming her suspicion: life was easier if one never let in anyone else. If two hearts grow to become one, what happens when one stops beating? Sure, Loyd and Edna had good fruit to show for their years together, but today’s heartache seemed to weigh heavier than all the harvests of yesteryear.

Maybe she was wrong. She hoped so, for the sake of all who’d ever married.

Someone tapped at the front door.

“I’ll get it.” Blanche headed that way.

They had a huge sign on the door that said Closed, but people knocked on the door anyway. This old place had been open six days a week since the early fifties.

Old habits died hard.

“Sadie,” Blanche called, “there’s a man here to see you. I didn’t recognize him, so I told him to wait outside.”

Sadie went toward the glass door. Her eyes widened as she reached for the handle. The man was facing the other way, with his hat in his hand, but there was no mistaking those loose curls of golden-brown hair. Of course, if his hair wasn’t a dead giveaway, there was the neck brace too. A smile tugged at her mouth for the first time in quite a while. She opened the heavy door, and the bells suspended over the entryway clanged as she stepped outside.

He turned awkwardly, having to move his whole body because of the
neck brace. There was a smile on his tan face, but what she noticed most of all was the spark in his eyes.

Sadie put her hands on her hips. “Well, look at you, standing on your own two feet.”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed.” She’d heard energy in his voice when they spoke on the phone, but this was the first time she could see vitality in his expression.

They moved away from the door, going a little farther onto the sidewalk as if they wanted some privacy. “What are you doing here?”

“There’s a horse auction nearby.”

“Decided to sell Amigo and get a new friend, did you?”

He chuckled. “No, nothing like that. Just helping a friend make some decisions. He doesn’t need me for a while, so I had the driver drop me off at your place. I walked here from there.”

“Good thing I was findable, or you’d be calling that driver to come back. You do have your phone, right?”